Scholarly Works
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/347
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Item A pragma-semiotic analysis of the Catholic bishops’ communiqué on the Ebola epidemic: Impact on the University of Ibadan Catholic faithful(Lulu Press Inc., 2017) Solomon-Etefia, P. O.; Nweya, G. O.This paper examines the extracts of the communiqué made by the Ibadan Catholic Bishops to the congregation on the Ebola epidemic. The paper identifies the practs, gives a semiotic interpretation of the signs visible, and discusses the impact of the communiqué on the Catholic faithful in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The data were collected from the Catholic Sunday Bulletin and the interviews conducted with, and the field notes collected from, the Catholic faithful informants (N=30) in the University of Ibadan. It utilised Mey’s pragmatic acts theory (PAT) and Saussure’s model of semiotic signs as the theoretical framework. The study shows that the communiqué is information motivated discourse on Ebola which comprises of direct acts that make use of the contextual features of shared situational knowledge, inferences, relevance, shared cultural knowledge, and references thereby exhibiting the pragmemes of cautioning, commanding, counselling and threatening; the semiotic sign ‘Holy Communion’ signifies the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ present in Bread and Wine, the semiotic sign ‘self-signing of oneself with holy water’ signifies spiritual cleansing, and the ‘sign of peace’ signifies love and unity among the people of God in the Church. Both the pragmemes and the semiotic signs have an impact on the Catholic Faithful in University of Ibadan.Item Plural strategies and devices in Igbo(University of Kansas, 2016) Nweya, G. O.This study examines strategies and devices adopted in Igbo to mark plurality on lexical items at both word and phrasal levels. The study provides additional evidence, adequate description, and explanation, as well as a theoretical background to the phenomenon which hitherto was not provided by earlier studies. Data were collected through observation, oral interview, and from existing literature. Data were analysed based on the principles and operations of the Minimalist Program. The study finds that five basic strategies could be employed to mark plurality in Igbo. These include merging of singular nouns with plural words or morphemes, via reduplication, use of conjunctions, use plural sensitive verbs, and context of speech. Plural devices include nouns with an inherent PL feature such as ndi ‘persons’ and umu ‘offspring’; the third person plural pronoun, ha; quantifiers such as niile/dum ‘all’; numerals abuo ‘two’ and above; mass nouns, igwe/igwurube ‘group’; clitics ga and nu ; reduplicated nouns; conjunctions na ‘and’; and plural-sensitive verbs such as chita ‘bring’, and ju, ‘be’. The study concludes that Igbo belongs to the set of languages that syntactically mark plural by using independent morphemes/words; i.e. plural words.